Documentation

Compiling PCL from source on Windows

This tutorial explains how to build the Point Cloud Library from source on
Microsoft Windows platforms. In this tutorial, we assume that you have built and installed
all the required dependencies, or that you have installed them using the dependencies
installers provided on the downloads page.

Note

If you installed PCL using one of the all-in-one provided installers, then this tutorial is not for you.
The all-in-one installer already contains prebuilt PCL binaries which are ready to be used without any compilation step.

Note

If there is no installers for your compiler, it is recommended that you build the dependencies
out of source. The Building PCL’s dependencies from source on Windows tutorial should guide you through the download
and the compilation of all the required dependencies.

Requirements

we assume that you have built and installed all the required dependencies, or that you have installed
them using the dependencies installers provided on the downloads page.
Installing them to the default locations will make configuring PCL easier.

Boost

used for shared pointers, and threading. mandatory

Eigen

used as the matrix backend for SSE optimized math. mandatory

FLANN

used in kdtree for fast approximate nearest neighbors search. mandatory

Visualization ToolKit (VTK)

used in visualization for 3D point cloud rendering and visualization. mandatory

is needed only to build PCL tests. We do not provide GTest installers. optional

Note

Though not a dependency per se, don’t forget that you also need the CMake
build system (http://www.cmake.org/), at least version 2.8.7. A Git client
for Windows is also required to download the PCL source code.

Downloading PCL source code

To build the current official release, download the source archive from
http://pointclouds.org/downloads/ and extract it somewhere on your disk, say C:\PCL\PCL-1.5.1-Source.
In this case, you can go directly to Configuring PCL section, and pay attention to adjust the
paths accordingly.

Or, you might want to build an experimental version
of PCL to test some new features not yet available in the official releases.
For this, you will need git ( http://git-scm.com/download ).

The invocation to download the source code is thus, using a command line:

You could also use Github for Windows (https://windows.github.com/), but that is potentially more
troublesome than setting up git on windows.

Configuring PCL

On Windows, we recommend to build shared PCL libraries with static dependencies. In this tutorial, we will use
static dependencies when possible to build shared PCL. You can easily switch to using shared dependencies. Then, you need
to make sure you put the dependencies’ dlls either in your PATH or in the same folder as PCL dlls and executables.
You can also build static PCL libraries if you want.

Run the CMake-gui application and fill in the fields:

Whereisthesourcecode:C:/PCL/pclWheretobuildthebinaries:C:/PCL

Now hit the “Configure” button. You will be asked for a generator. A generator is simply a compiler.

Note

In this tutorial, we will be using Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 compiler. If you want to build 32bit PCL, then pick the
“Visual Studio 10” generator. If you want to build 64bit PCL, then pick the “Visual Studio 10 Win64”.

Make sure you have installed the right third party dependencies. You cannot mix 32bit and 64bit code, and it is
highly recommended to not mix codes compiled with different compilers.

In the remaining of this tutorial, we will be using “Visual Studio 10 Win64” generator. Once you picked your generator,
hit finish to close the dialog window. CMake will start configuring PCL and looking for its dependencies. For example, we
can get this output :

The upper part of CMake window contains a list of CMake variables and its respective values. The lower part contains some logging
output that can help figure out what is happening. We can see, for example, that VTK was not found, thus, the visualization module
will not get built.

Before solving the VTK issue, let’s organize the CMake variables in groups by checking the Grouped checkbox in the top right of
CMake window. Let’s check also the Advanced checkbox to show some advanced CMake variables. Now, if we want to look for a specific
variable value, we can either browse the CMake variables to look for it, or we can use the Search: field to type the variable name.

Let’s check whether CMake did actually find the needed third party dependencies or not :

Boost :

CMake was not able to find boost automatically. No problem, we will help it find it :) . If CMake has found your
boost installation, then skip to the next bullet item.

Let’s tell CMake where boost headers are by specifying the headers path in Boost_INCLUDE_DIR variable. For example, my boost
headers are in C:\Program Files\PCL-Boost\include (C:\Program Files\Boost\include for newer installers).
Then, let’s hit configure again ! Hopefully, CMake is now able to find all the other items (the libraries).

Note

This behaviour is not common for all libraries. Generally, if CMake is not able to find a specific library or package, we have to
manually set the values of all the CMake related variables. Hopefully, the CMake script responsible of finding boost
is able to find libraries using the headers path.

Eigen :

Eigen is a header-only library, thus, we need only EIGEN_INCLUDE_DIR to be set. Hopefully, CMake did fing Eigen.

FLANN :

CMake was able to find my FLANN installation. By default on windows, PCL will pick the static FLANN libraries
with _s suffix. Thus, the FLANN_IS_STATIC checkbox is checked by default.

Note

If you rather want to use the shared FLANN libraries (those without the _s suffix), you need to manually edit the
FLANN_LIBRARY and FLANN_LIBRARY_DEBUG variables to remove the _s suffix and do not forget to uncheck
FLANN_IS_STATIC. Make sure the FLANN dlls are either in your PATH or in the same folder as your executables.

Note

In recent PCL, the FLANN_IS_STATIC checkbox no longer exists.

Qt :

It is highly recommended to install Qt to the default path suggested by the installer. You need then to define an
environment variable named QTDIR to point to Qt installation path (e.g. C:\Qt\4.8.0). Also, you need to
append the bin folder to the PATH environment variable. Once you modify the environment variables, you need to
restart CMake and click “Configure” again. If Qt is not found, you need at least to fill QT_QMAKE_EXECUTABLE
CMake entry with the path of qmake.exe (e.g. C:\Qt\4.8.0\bin\qmake.exe), then click “Configure”.

VTK :

CMake did not find my VTK installation. There is only one VTK related CMake variable called VTK_DIR. We have to set it
to the path of the folder containing VTKConfig.cmake, which is in my case : C:\Program Files\VTK 5.6\lib\vtk-5.6
(C:\Program Files\VTK 5.8.0\lib\vtk-5.8 for VTK 5.8).
After you set VTK_DIR, hit configure again.

After clicking configure, in the logging window, we can see that VTK is found, but the visualization module is still
disabled manually. We have then to enable it by checking the BUILD_visualization checkbox. You can also do the same thing
with the apps module. Then, hit configure again.

QHull :

CMake was able to find my QHull installation. By default on windows, PCL will pick the static QHull libraries
with static suffix.

OpenNI :

CMake was able to find my OpenNI installation.

Note

CMake do not look for the installed OpenNI Sensor module. It is needed at runtime.

GTest :

If you want to build PCL tests, you need to download GTest and build it yourself. In this tutorial, we will not build tests.

Once CMake has found all the needed dependencies, let’s see the PCL specific CMake variables :

PCL_SHARED_LIBS is checked by default. Uncheck it if you want static PCL libs (not recommended).

CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX is where PCL will be installed after building it (more information on this later).

If you have the Pro version of Microsoft Visual Studio, you can check USE_PROJECT_FOLDERS checkbox to organize PCL
projects in folders within the PCL solution. If you have an express edition, it is recommended to keep it unchecked, as in
express editions, project folders are disabled.

Once PCL configuration is ok, hit the Generate button. CMake will then generate Visual Studio project files (vcproj files)
and the main solution file (PCL.sln) in C:\PCL directory.

Building PCL

Open that generated solution file (PCL.sln) to finally build the PCL libraries. This is how your solution will look like
whether you enabled USE_PROJECT_FOLDERS (left) or not (right).

Building the “ALL_BUILD” project will build everything.

Note

Make sure to build the “ALL_BUILD” project in both debug and release mode.

Installing PCL

To install the built libraries and executbles, you need to build the “INSTALL” project in the solution explorer.
This utility project will copy PCL headers, libraries and executable to the directory defined by the CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX
CMake variable.

Note

Make sure to build the “INSTALL” project in both debug and release mode.

Advanced topics

Building PCL Tests :

If you want to build PCL tests, you need to download GTest 1.6 (http://code.google.com/p/googletest/) and build it yourself.
Make sure, when you configure GTest via CMake to check the gtest_force_shared_crt checkbox. You need, as usual, to build
GTest in both release and debug.

Back to PCL’s CMake settings, you have to fill the GTEST_* CMake entries (include directory, gtest libraries (debug and release)
and gtestmain libraries (debug and release)). Then, you have to check BUILD_TEST and BUILD_global_tests CMake checkboxes,
and hit Configure and Generate.

Building the documentation :

You can build the doxygen documentation of PCL in order to have a local up-to-date api documentation. For this, you need
Doxygen (http://www.doxygen.org). You will need also the Graph Visualization Software (GraphViz, http://www.graphviz.org/)
to get the doxygen graphics, specifically the dot executable.

Once you installed these two packages, hit Configure. Three CMake variables should be set (if CMake cannot find them,
you can fill them manually) :

Then, you need to enable the documentation project in Visual Studio by checking the BUILD_DOCUMENTATION checkbox in CMake.

You can also build one single CHM file that will gather all the generated html files into one file. You need the Microsoft
HTML HELP Workshop.
After you install the Microsoft HTML HELP Workshop, hit Configure. If CMake is not able to find HTML_HEL_COMPILER, then fill
it manually with the path to hhc.exe (e.g. C:/Program Files (x86)/HTML Help Workshop/hhc.exe), then click Configure and Generate.

Now, in PCL Visual Studio solution, you will have a new project called doc. To generate the documentation files, right click on it,
and choose Build. Then, you can build the INSTALL project so that the generated documentation files get copied to
CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX/PCL/share/doc/pcl/html folder (e.g. C:\Program Files\PCL\share\doc\pcl\html).

Using PCL

We finally managed to compile the Point Cloud Library (PCL) as binaries for
Windows. You can start using them in your project by following the
Using PCL in your own project tutorial.